In recognition of the extremely high rates of soil nutrient depletion and stagnant agricultural productivity prevailing in Africa, the African Union (AU) Heads of State and Government convened the Africa Fertilizer Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, in June 2006 under the auspices of the AU and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). The key outcome of the Summit was the Abuja Declaration on Fertilizer for an African Green Revolution, which African leaders unanimously endorsed. The Abuja Declaration calls for a substantial increase in average fertilizer use in Africa from 8.0 to 50 kg of nutrients per ha by 2015. It delineates concrete actions and key initiatives that, if implemented at the national and regional levels, will improve the accessibility, affordability and availability of quality fertilizers and other modern inputs and usher a Green Revolution onto the African continent. All of these measures are to be supported by the African Development Bank, the Economic Commission for Africa, the Regional Development Banks, the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), other development partners and the private sector. The Africa Fertilizer Summit was one of the largest meetings in history to focus on Africa’s food issues. IFDC was chosen to help organize and to implement the Summit and over 1,100 participants attended, including five African heads of state, 15 ministers of agriculture and hundreds of leaders of international organizations, agricultural research centers and private sector companies. The Abuja Declaration also calls for the elimination of all taxes and tariffs on fertilizer. Summit participants also agreed on 12 resolutions designed to increase fertilizer use five-fold in 10 years. Five years after the historic Summit, what progress has been made? NEPAD is responsible for tracking progress, has gathered data from African countries and RECs and has released periodic progress reports over the past five years.
There are signs of improvement in the implementation of the Abuja Declaration by some countries and RECs. At the country level, there has been progress in the implementation of the following resolutions: Resolution 3 (number of agro-dealers, distance traveled, fertilizer use, market size); Resolution 4 (capacity-building activities for the private sector); Resolution 5 (the number of respondents with fertilizer subsidies); and Resolution 7 (public, public-private and private initiatives to lower the risks to financial institutions of lending to fertilizer importers and agro-dealers); Resolution 9 (private sector initiatives for fertilizer production); and Resolution 10 (use of complementary inputs). Progress in the development of agro-dealer networks and capacity building initiatives is due in part to AGRA, IFDC and other organizations. They are working on these issues throughout Africa. There is an upward trend in the number of agro-dealers over the past five years, and although many farmers are still traveling more than 10 kilometers (km) to purchase fertilizers, the situation is improving. There is also an upward trend in the percentage of smallholder farmers who are using mineral fertilizers. While fertilizer markets in Africa remain small, there is a positive trend in market size. However, fertilizer consumption in the majority of African countries remains far less than the Abuja target of 50 kg/ha. Several of the RECs have structured agro-input programs with clear goals and objectives, but concrete steps need to be taken to translate these programs into substantive changes in terms of policy and regulatory reforms, lower fertilizer prices and ultimately increased fertilizer consumption. A number of RECs have embarked on initiatives to: harmonize legal and regulatory frameworks and trade policy; fertilizer production; and intraand inter-REC trade.
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The program was designed for agronomists, soil scientists, meteorologists and economists from national and international agricultural research institutes and universities, as well as policymakers in charge of agricultural productivity and planning. Increasing global crop production will depend on ever-more judicious use of resources. Issues such as climate change, climate variability, soil carbon sequestration, biofuels, long-term food security and environmental sustainability have become increasingly important as the world’s population continues to grow and the amount of arable land decreases. Computer simulation models of the soil/plant/atmosphere system can make a valuable contribution to both furthering our understanding of the processes that determine crop responses and predicting crop performance, resource use and environmental impacts for different environments and management scenarios.
User-oriented simulation models greatly facilitate the task of optimizing crop growth and deriving recommendations concerning crop management. They can also be used to determine the potential impact of climate change on crop production and long-term soil carbon sequestration, or provide management scenarios for adapting to climate change and variability. Workshop faculty included: Dr. Senthold Asseng, Dr. Kenneth Boote, Dr. J.W. Jones and Ms. Cheryl Porter (University of Florida); Dr. Gerrit Hoogenboom (Washington State); Dr. L.A. Hunt (University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada); Dr. Upendra Singh and Dr. Paul Wilkens (IFDC); and Dr. J. W. White (USDA-ARS-ALARC). Information about the training session can be found on IFDC’s website: http://www.ifdc.org/Training.
Africa Fertilizer Summit (Continued from Page 15) Specifically, there are no external tariffs (duties and border taxes) on fertilizers imported into the EAC, and a similar initiative is underway in COMESA and ECOWAS. ECOWAS and UEMOA jointly launched the five-year MIR Plus project to facilitate the development of a regional agro-input market in West Africa in support of the implementation of regional agricultural policies. The MIR Plus project is being implemented by IFDC. However, there has been little progress on the following resolutions: Resolution 2 (inspection capacity for quality control; establishment of legal and regulatory frameworks; reduction/ elimination of taxes on fertilizers); Resolution 3 (availability of fertilizers in various bag sizes); Resolution 5 (the majority of the subsidies are not targeted); and Resolution 11 (establishment of the Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism, or AFFM). In order for the Abuja Declaration to be fully implemented, the following actions need to occur: countries need to implement policy and regulatory frameworks that develop sustainable and competitive agro-input markets, including national capacity to inspect fertilizer at the point of sale; countries should eliminate all taxes and tariffs on fertilizer and on fertilizer raw materials and seek alternative sources of revenue; countries should implement targeted, smart subsidies by using input vouchers (or a similarly effective mechanism) to target poor farmers and use the private sector to import and distribute fertilizers for government fertilizer subsidy programs; countries should commit funds from national budgets to bridge the funding gap required to create the AFFM; and to improve access to finance for fertilizer importers and agro-dealers, governments should pass legislation that will improve access to foreign exchange
for importers and provide credit guarantees to commercial banks that finance agro-dealers. In an address on the Summit, Dr. Amit Roy, president and CEO of IFDC, stated “The obstacles to agricultural development in Africa are enormous and long-standing. Human, institutional and research capacity, as well as physical infrastructure, must be built to enable Africa to compete effectively. Policies should be changed to encourage business investment. Furthermore, as history has demonstrated, countries must take charge of their own futures if they are to build better futures for their children.”
2007 Fertilizer Use in Africa (by country)
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